And It All Came True
by MinaRobins
Summary: During the hours when the glow in her room turned a dusky grey she could almost make out the letters Emma's fingertips would draw. Was she supposed to claim ignorance to the words scrawled onto her skin? To the way Emma's eyes shone with something that reminded Regina of an affection too fragile to keep out in the daylight?


**Title**: And It All Came True

**Author**: Mina Robins

**Fandom**: Once Upon A Time

**Pairing**: SwanQueen

**Rating**: T One-Shot

**Summary**: During the hours when the glow in her room turned a dusky grey she could almost make out the letters Emma's fingertips would draw. Was she supposed to claim ignorance to the words scrawled onto her skin? To the way Emma's eyes shone with something that reminded Regina of an affection too fragile to keep out in the daylight?

* * *

Emma grabs for Regina's wrists and slams them against the wall, the cheap paint cracks from the aged structure, causing flicks of it to dust their hair. Why did Regina choose the cheapest possible motel for their meetings? Most would presume someone as regal as the Madame Mayor would only ever deign to the very height of luxury and yet, here they were now. Was it because Regina was ashamed of their son finding out?

That he'll walk into the master bedroom one morning and see her sharing his adoptive mother's bed? Regina must despise it, to have Emma, righteous and naive, someone that embodied the very love she attempted to destroy being able to bring her cresting over the precipice of pleasure. Emma's free hand glides down the bumps of the other woman's ribs and the curve of her hip, skimming along the waist band of the skirt before flicking at the clasp to leave her in just a set of lacy panties.

"Tell me you want this." Emma leans forward and crushes her bittersweet smile against Regina's lips, pretending to swallow the answer that the proud woman would never provide. Emma knew that if this was the only way she could have Regina then she'll still settle for it, and Regina knew it too. Regina's hands release their grip on Emma's shoulder, sliding down over the blonde's collar bones, taking a moment to cup Emma's chest, thumbs flicking over her already hardened nipples.

Regina's nails scrape along Emma's toned abdomen and then unbuttoned the impossibly tight jeans, she pushes her hands into the other's undergarments and presses her fingers against Emma's core. Emma bucks, almost immediately, she would bet on her life that Regina was intoxicated on the power, would bask in being able to cause Emma's to unravel so easily.

Another lover would've teased her with something sweet and nonchalant but of course Regina purrs in that particularly malicious tone even when they are in bed together. "Someone is easily excited, aren't they?" It's said in a way that Emma knows she should feel ashamed of her own body's reactions and she does to the point where heat burns uncomfortably insistent on her cheeks.

Emma wants the façade to continue, wants this hate to blossom into more. Something that becomes healthy and their fervent touches evolve into something that could be witnessed by daylight. With PG-13 dialogue and secretive hand holdings in the darkness of the theatre they take their son to, but her story is not one of fairy tales and happy endings. She scoffs, well, at least not the pure kind of happy endings. "Fuck you." It's terribly senseless and just a tad disappointing that her bedmate wanted even less to do with her in the morning that she normally did to the faceless lovers of her youth.

"Well, you're first in line for that position once I get you off." Regina twists her hand just so; it makes Emma cringe to be so easily taken.

Regina is pumping her fingers in and out in a breakneck pace while Emma does her damnest not to mewl under the incessant assault of lips, tongue and touch. She was never one to be quiet in bed but no one else has quite managed to play her quite like Regina. Though it only took one smug look after their first session together to make Emma withhold her voice from ever betraying her extent of pleasure. She's petty like this, and silly if she truly thought about it since it was harder to release herself into the euphoria of Regina's attention when she's so busy making sure she's as silent as death when she comes.

Emma strains off the bed and tucks her face into the crook of Regina's overheated neck; she can hear their hearts pound almost to the same beat. She bites into Regina's shoulder to muffle her own scream and manages to gain a throaty groan from her partner. She still has her arms locked around the other woman's nape when Regina starts to pull away.

"That's quite enough, Ms. Swan." Regina intones, her voice holding no room for argument as she wipes her fingers dry on the linen of the motel bed. "Now if you don't mind."

Regina slides her body off of Emma's sticky and overexerted one, she watches with some distain as Emma takes far too long to settle down but willing opens her legs when Emma rolls to situate herself between them.

…

"You did this!" Emma was past logic; past any reasonable measure of displeasure. She couldn't believe that Regina would stoop so low, to allow her ire for some ridiculous slight done on Emma's part close enough to harm Henry. "That apple, he had this stupid apple of all things that he had to drag me into your room to see."

"What?" If Emma were of saner mind she would have recognized the genuine disbelief in Regina's words, but all she could feel was righteous fury. She was an idiot in thinking that Regina had any good in her. She felt even stupider that she had thought that their night time meetings were anything more than a trade in flesh, them together in a truce was only for the shameful indulgence of sex.

The bottles and packages of medicine tumble over their shoulders as Emma rams her into the metal cabinets. The pain is sharp and unforgiving to her back but she doesn't have the drive to return the damage she'll likely sustain from this encounter. She hadn't meant for Henry to consume the poison apple. She hadn't even begun to bake it into an end for Emma.

She had taken the apple from her past with full intentions of stopping the cursed Saviour from ruining her plans until an angry verbal bout with Emma had ended with them one on top of another on her desk. Graham's life had ended for a few weeks at that point and who could blame her for needing to get off whilst dealing with an unwaveringly imbecilic Sheriff? That had been their first tryst together and Regina promised herself to never allow them within the sanctum of her office again.

Though she was not one to be unprepared, if her tutelage under Rumple had not taught her at least that then she hadn't been taught anything at all. The enchanted apple had its own stasis spell, it lay sitting in a drawer of her bedroom, forever displaying Snow's first bite but never rusting or decaying as other fruits would. Her plan B would sit in waiting until the time came where Emma was more of a hindrance than a pleasure. Until then it would be her safety net. A promise to herself.

Regina had been heading to the mausoleum with the apple for safer keeping when Emma had stormed into her bedroom. More like clumber through her window than stormed, though it had the same outcome of a peeved but concerned Regina. Emma had let out an irritated grunt as she finished scaling the trellis and discarded her jacket then worked on her jeans as she had approached Regina.

The 'How dare you' was cut off by Emma's lips, their front teeth had clicked painfully into each other until Regina threw the apple onto the ground and met Emma's forceful touch with equal vigor.

That whole scenario felt like it was a forever ago, in a time when all she had to contend with was the idea that Emma might trespass into her domain with little more than lingerie and a confession of despising motel rooms, it was not exactly the biggest threat to her existence.

Regina had made concessions, allowed changes in her ways set in stone; her rules chiselled into innocuous pallets of cement became malleable under Emma's pigheaded insistence.

Her bed sheets were warmed by a lithe body that willingly stayed the nights. The scent of the pillows carried not cologne but cheap lotions that made Regina sniffle in distaste. And sometimes during the hours when the glow in her room turned a dusky grey she could almost make out the letters Emma's fingertips would draw. Was she supposed to claim ignorance to the words scrawled onto her skin? To the way Emma's eyes shone with something that reminded Regina of an affection too fragile to keep out in the daylight?

Surely their relationship was not supposed to transcend anywhere near functional. That Emma's clothes should not have made their way sneakily into a drawer she herself had left open and waiting to be filled. That a routine of work and Henry should not have an allotment of space for Emma to slip into. That it was surreal to think that Emma, groggy with sleep and cheek holding red indentions from their sheets made her appear absurdly endearing in Regina's eyes.

"You did this!" Emma was repeating herself in her rage, her indignant tears making her lips shine and causing Regina to meet her frustration halfway. Emma's crying out of abject misery, anxiety over Henry and to make everything else feel so much worse, she's humiliated that she thought she could ever care for Regina Mills.

Or that Regina was even capable of caring back.

…

Regina doesn't expect to see Emma once the curse breaks but she has yet to resign completely from her son's life. She still recalls Henry glowing under his grandparents' attention and fussing the minute they crash into the hospital room. Regina had loitered just outside the gathering family. The glass fogging around the warmth of her shaking hand, the thin translucent barrier the only thing separating her from her son. Her eyes had darted onto Emma's back, she watched in dismay as her normally strong partner cried with Henry awake and well in her arms.

Henry is carelessly cruel now that his claims have been validated. She expects more from him and she wonders if that was what her own mother felt during her betrayal. Perhaps she expected too much and gave too little. The fairy tale characters stampeded onto her lawn and it isn't until Emma rushes into the scene does she open her front door. She tells herself it's because she's had quite enough of seeing her precious flora being crushed under peasant shoes and nothing with how her heart crunches at the sight of Emma's strained expression.

They leave her alone soon enough; her heart feels like it's going to explode when Henry hurries to her defence and then it crumples when Emma says not a word to her. Emma doesn't even look over her shoulder as she drags Henry into her car.

"I'll keep him this week."

Emma ignores Henry's complaints and he's precocious enough to recall what wisps of love look like. He had wanted to stop this from happening, save his mom from getting tricked into believing the wrong thing.

He had bitten the fruit to protect her from heartache, but when he creeps down the stairs and watches Emma take long drags from an amber liquid that smelt like apples and hears her sniffle down her tears. He wonders if he's caused the pain instead of preventing it.

…

They lose contact completely.

They never talk about what had happened between them during the hours when the entire world slept and only the moon lit their excursions. When Emma had thought her bedfellow was unaware and she amused herself with learning every curve and dip of Regina's body.

It takes Regina absorbing an entire killing curse before Emma enters back into the mansion. Henry has moved back in as well and Emma tries and fails entirely to make a good chicken noodle soup. Snow moves in on the behest of her only daughter and Charming comes along with the package. The Whites remain on the lower levels of the mansion and only Emma ever brings the meals up to Regina.

It's an unspoken rule that neither group acknowledge that the other is present. Snow ignores the fact that she always makes enough for five instead of four and Charming is just grateful for a bed that was located in a place that was actually a room and not a living room. Regina pretends that Emma has spontaneously learnt how to cook and Henry flits between the two sides with fruitless attempts at bringing his mothers and grandparents together. He's trying to amend his wrongs but neither side are willing to compromise.

Regina doesn't know how to inform Emma that it had been one big misunderstanding. That she had even forgotten that the apple had sat waiting like a hunter's trap on her path towards happiness. That she had been as guileless as a fool caught in fondness, too distracted by what contentment felt like to remember the curse that ambushed her. The notion is so raw and childish that the words feel acidic on her dry tongue.

When she had first awoken, she had wanted to just let someone chop her head off. Her skin burnt with excess magic, the kind that poisoned and stole life. Absorbing a killing curse should have had just one effect and yet here she was still alive and breathing. Each breathe tore scraps off her throat and her lungs seized with each inhale and exhale but she was still here. Her body felt too goddamn wrung out to move and she was sticky from sweat. A cool hand had pressed to her forehead before a refreshingly comforting towel was wiped against her skin.

Someone laced their fingers with hers and even though it agitated her internal injuries at first, it soon stopped. It was Emma's hand in hers and she could sense that it was not only magic that soothed her pain.

The drawer Regina had empty out months ago still holds the clothing that Emma has never returned for. Regina can't bring herself to clean out the only reminder she has left of their short encounter.

Emma can't risk her heart again to test whether she had once been allowed a place in Regina's life.

…

It's not Emma that starts them on sex this time.

Regina's eyes are hooded and peaceful as Emma pushes a loofah over the rise of her breast. She's no longer so weak that she can't accomplish the chore herself. Though neither says a word as Emma enters the bathroom and squeezes expensive soaps into her hands.

Regina can't contain the whimper that escapes from her as Emma brushes the sponge excruciatingly close to where she aches. Emma has helped her nightly ablution multitudes of times over the last month but Regina had always been too drowsy from the cosy waters and fatigued from the curse that jostled her organs to do more than groan and writhe. She blinks up at Emma and for once her expression is not faux coyness but genuine affection. She lets her emotions seep into her expression and hopes against reason as she tugs on the waistband of Emma's boxers. She drags Emma close until the other woman acquiesces and slides one leg and then another into the tub. They stay sitting, facing one another for a while before Emma slicks the wet tank top and boxer shorts from her body and plops them noisily onto the bathroom tiles.

"You'll be the one to pick them up, dear." Regina lets the term of endearment drag over her tongue, elongating it so there's a purr hidden between the 'e' and the 'a'.

"Maybe." Emma returns and then she's lathering the soap into Regina's calves, working the tense muscles free of their knots. The appreciative sigh from Regina encourages her further but when her finger tips glance just shy of the apex of Regina's legs, Emma backs up and works on the other leg.

Regina tries to hide her disappointment and shifts uneasily. All her sexual frustration in the past months congregating together to make her pliant and wanting, she pulls her leg free from Emma and turns so that her back is pressed into Emma's naked front. The barely repressed moan makes Regina encourage Emma's hands to wrap around her torso. It takes a while more until she can place Emma's fingertips to her clitoris. Regina tries to be calm, collected and refrains from grinding against the passive touch Emma has against her body.

There is no string of 'please' or mantra made of Emma's name. There are no words that are enough to start up a song that had ended by the breaking of a 28 year old curse. Regina has to initiate it, has to show that she wants it. It makes her already reddened cheeks heat up and this time it has nothing to do with the steam that fogs the mirrors across from them. To have her wants so openly known. It's improper and something a well brought up lady such as herself should never engage in. The taboo of her actions only makes her movements quicken until her hips are rocking into Emma's hand. A continuous keening sound leaves her before she can think better to stop it and Emma presses a kiss to her neck, just where the curve of her spine ends.

Regina almost bolts from the arms around her when Emma finally does touch her, really presses and rolls her fingers against her; it makes the water slosh over the side of the bathtub and Regina finds herself not caring just this once.

Emma flattens her hand away from Regina's guiding touch and skims down so that she cups Regina's sex. She swirls a timid finger just at Regina's entrance and after so many rough encounters it surprises Regina to hear how laboured her breathing becomes.

"M-more." Regina coughs but the stutter doesn't leave her words when she voices her wishes again. She can only grasp onto the edges of the porcelain tub as her head lolls back onto Emma's shoulder.

Emma's grin is dampened by melancholy but Regina misses it as two fingers finally slide into her body. It is a passionate ride to the finish line and when Emma's curls her touch just a tad to that spot, it forces Regina to crumble. She can feel herself falling apart and Regina intuitively knows that if there was one place where it was safe to unravel it would be in Emma's arms.

Minutes later, Regina flutters her eyes open to Emma's relieved hazel orbs, she reaches back and pulls Emma close for a kiss but her lover turns at the last moment and she finds her lips pressing against the other woman's cheek. "Oh."

"We aren't… I can't, at least not how we were." Emma sounds apologetic but Regina ends up wondering why the guiltless can sound so doleful.

"Thankfully, Ms. Swan," it vexes her that Emma gets to be the one to set the rules for them, that another has control; Regina knows no other way to deal with rejection but with malice, "we were never anything to begin with."

Emma bites her tongue and there's something that resembles acceptance in a long known fact that makes Regina's heart hurt more than anything the killing curse has put her through. Emma scrambles out of the tepid waters and leaves the room with the only towel available.

Regina finds herself missing the legs that book-cased around hers and is unappreciative of the hard curve of her tub. She feels like some cheap whore just plying for her trade, after a night with a john it leaves her body barely sated and her chest gapingly empty.

…

Cora is dead.

Regina holds her mother's body tightly against hers and wonders time and time again why everyone she's ever cared about has ended up dead in her arms. Daniel, both her parents… Who's next? She blinks through burning tears to look at the horrified shock on Emma's face.

Never again will she allow it to happen. She had been the one to rip her father's out then and now she's the one to slot her mother's cursed heart back in.

She had tried repeatedly to reach in and grasp the poisoned organ from her mother's chest but even with her wrist and hand compressed by the magic that allowed her to bypass muscle and bone she can't make the stubborn heart budge.

The flesh of her hand feels burnt when it vacates her mother's chest with nothing but air. The toxins from the curse have corroded through the leathers of her gloves and excoriated the skin of her palms.

Regina was never enough; if she had been, then perhaps her mother would still be here now. She didn't need love, it was a weakness. It was this needy flaw that has cost her mother her life. If she could've she would surely take her mother's place, give her functioning heart to pump warmth into Cora's cooling skin.

"Regina, if there's anything that you nee-"

"I _need_ my mother!" Regina snaps at Snow, her fury making a heavy misting fog of tyrian purple fill the room, it's deeper than the amethyst that normally comes to her. It's unnaturally dark and it reminds her of the clotting blood that seeps from the corner of Cora's lips.

Emma is kneeling before her and brings a hand up to caress Regina's cheek; she's brushing away tears that won't stop flowing. A cerulean glow mingles with the colours around Regina until the cloud around them is a mixture of dioxazine purple and prussian blue. There's no unity in the tendrils of magic that tangle and glance off one another but there's also no signs of them repelling either.

When Snow tries to approach her daughter the mingling strands of magic swirl around the pair, it cocoons the three of them in a thick haze and when it fades so do they.

They find themselves inside Henry senior's resting place, in the sanctum sanctorum of Regina's remaining land. She's not quite strong enough to move Cora so all she can do is cradle her mother in her arms and drench the fine clothing with her tears.

"Mommy." Regina's voice cracks, broken and hollow as her pleas for her mother goes unanswered by the dead.

It's heartrending to see Regina shatter. There was absolutely nothing holding Regina back from her dismal spiral into anguish and Emma doesn't know what to do. She strokes her hands soothingly down Regina's quaking body. "Regina..." She needed some guidance but the person she would listen to was currently disposed to anything but agony.

"I'm not strong enough." Regina struggles on her spot on the ground but isn't able to move Cora's body. "I'm not good enough."

"No, Regina, god." Emma slides her arms under Cora's neck and crook of her knees and then lifts the weight against her body. "Where do you want us to place her… With your father?" Emma's voice is a bare whisper, the atmosphere of loss too dreary to overcome.

Regina nods and wipes at her eyes, it doesn't stop the tears and she can hardly walk so she stumbles after Emma as they travel back up the stairs. The top of the stone casket takes a lot of work before it finally slams onto the floor. A plume of dust unsettles from the floor and Emma doesn't know what to expect, bones, a desiccated body, but certainly not an unoccupied box. Emma gently places Cora into her final resting place and Regina then recites spells to preserve the body in eternal stagnancy.

When Regina dips her head at Emma, they both work together to cover the coffin with the slab of stone. With the task done, all Regina can do is weep for the pathetic and never ending tragedy of her life. So many deaths were on her shoulders to bear, if only she had been strong enough, if only she was ever enough.

"Do you want me to drive us… drive you home?" Emma is hesitant, her emotions in a complete disarray after what happened with Snow.

"I have neither mother nor child." Regina's eyes are as vacant as the tomb once has been when they flick up at Emma. "No family or home."

"Regina." Emma wants to cry for Regina's loss but instead she guides the other woman up and leads them back downstairs to where she had caught sight of a downy bed. The stone covering groans into place above them and shields them from the search party that has begun to scour the town.

Regina drops into the bedding and drags a pillow into her arms. The room looks meticulously cared for, even the duvet had been carefully folded but with the way that Regina snivels into the blankets, Emma can guess who had occupied this room.

Emma takes the time to take off Regina's high heels and layers of autumn jackets and scarves. When she reaches to deal with the mangled gloves, Emma takes extra care to be gentle.

Regina weakly shoves Emma's hands away and all but rips the leather from her raw palms. She feels like she deserves the pain and wants more of it so she runs her nails against the clotting wounds until new blood pulses to the surface. She doesn't know how to cease crying since all she can fixate upon it all the wasted minutes and how utterly useless she has been through it all. It's a boundless pool of regret, the turmoil doesn't appear to have a conclusion and it takes moments for Regina to once again consider ending it all.

Regina clenches a hand over her heart and tries futilely to reach for the blasted organ but she's too disconcerted to focus her magic. She ends up weakly beating her abraded palm into her blouse, the blood and flesh making a slopping smack each and every time.

Emma tries to stop Regina's movements but it only exasperates the condition of the wound when she struggles against Emma's staying hand. Emma rushes over to the adjoining bathroom and runs warm water onto a towel, she returns to bed and wraps Regina's injured limb in the soft heat before coaxing the other women of the bloody blouse. Emma unbuttons and rids Regina of the prim grey pants and pushes the covers until she can bundle Regina under the layers of pallid comfort.

Emma lingers by the side of the bed, unsure of where she was supposed to be. She takes time to grab another towel, wetting it just enough and bringing it to Regina's running make up. It takes her a long while to clean the mess since Regina attempts to remove the towel on her palm and Emma thinks it's best to bandage the injury before dealing with cosmetics.

There's no emergency medical kit to be found in the crypt so Emma starts shredding her thin tank top and uses the makeshift bandages to bind the wound for the time being. She brings a roll of toilet paper to the bedside and Regina dabs at her eyes before noisily blowing her nose. There's a moment when she looks conscientious of her dire appearance but the thought of decorum only brings her mind back to Cora and another round of limitless tears.

Emma sits at the edge of the bed in just her bra and jeans, her shoes already kicked off but she's unable to just curl around Regina without permission. She starts to get up in the hopes of finding clothing to wrap around her chilly frame when Regina's undamaged hand grips onto her bicep with surprising strength. "Don't."

Don't? Don't what? Don't be the daughter of a murdering fairy tale character? Don't be a bystander to homicide? Don't fail those that rely on you? Don't be in-

"Don't leave me." Regina's voice is impossibly small under the covers and it's her normal rule of never asking for favours that surface but is squashed down just as quickly. "Please, if you could stay."

Emma wordlessly molds herself into Regina's back; her thumb caressing the bump of Regina's hipbone until the other woman's breathing softens from choked sobs and evens into the regularities of slumber.

…

Another electroshock jolts through Regina's systems until all she can see is splotching light but this time there's no reprieve from the pains she suffers under, it just doesn't stop.

She's told Greg or Owen -or whatever he labels himself these days- what he wanted to know. That his foolish father was dead. Regina should have slaughtered the child that ran with her secret but couldn't bring herself to kill the piece of love the child ignited in her heart. And now look at what that brought her. Love surely was a weakness.

Emma was back, there's no reason for her to stall the inevitable, and her death should have happened what felt like eons ago. Henry would be protected by his other mother, they would be safe and the Evil Queen that ruined their lives would get her just rewards.

Her body shakes off the chair from the continuous current, she had held on as long as she could but her vision was a blur and the heated tingly sensation had numbed to the point of snapping her body in half. There is a crank of a dial in the far off distance and then her grimace was frozen in a bite that felt like she could crush her own teeth into her skull, her muscles contract into themselves all in one go until she is sure that she would be torn apart.

At the very threshold of agony when she was about to let it go there was suddenly nothing.

A hand strokes against her squared jaw and a hoof of a horse pummels into her chest. Regina gasps and chokes on air as the braces around her wrists dig deep into her flesh. She's still in the throes of the aftershock and can't help but buck and tear at her restraints. She's silent through the whole ordeal. She refuses to break down, to let one iota of her suffering be enjoyed by one other man that tries to make her submit. She renounces any that dare use her for their entertainment and withholds each and every piece of herself to anyone but-

"Emma!" Charming blunders into the room with all the grace of a sheep herder. "You found her!"

There's a terrible moment when Emma wants to throw her hour long frustrations onto her father and inform him that she'll always find Regina just to irk him. No one but Regina believed her suspicion of Tamara and Greg, if they had just listened to her earlier then it wouldn't have taken so long to find the prostrate woman now. Mary Margaret had a droplet of Regina's torture and had promptly passed out; Emma could only imagine what Regina had been forced to endure this whole time they were running around like a pack of idiots. "We need to get her help."

"Right." He moves forward and prepares to throw Regina over his shoulder in a firemen carry; it's the most efficient use of energy and thus can transport her quickest to their car.

Emma grips his shoulder until he backs away, confusion in his eyes. "As in, go outside where there's signal so you can call the ambulance, we shouldn't move her."

Charming nods, "Right." He runs back out just as Snow charges into the room, her bow at the ready.

Emma threads her fingers through Regina's sweat matted locks and pressed her lips to Regina's brow. "It's okay, I've got you."

"Catch. Greg." Words trip over themselves through Regina's parched throat.

"Mary Margaret," Emma's tone is acerbic but she hides the strain behind cordialities, "could you _please_ look for Greg, he should still be around here." Emma moves to unbuckle the restraints now that Regina is stable.

"Emma, your father has called the ambulance and we should stick together-"

"That's why I'm staying with Regina." Emma glares back, astonished by her mother's carelessness. "Do you want me to just leave her here, defenceless like this?"

"No, of course not but I'm just suggesting that we focus our combined efforts on something more important." Snow tentatively motions for the door but Emma only stares back.

There's a flicker of emotion on Regina's face that passes as quickly as it appeared.

"No, don't worry." Emma squeezes the hand that still shows clear scars. "Of course I'm staying, you _are_ important."

…

There's undeniably not enough power to shut down the torrent of magic that fluctuates around the onyx diamond. Regina knows this for certain but realizes that Emma does not. That Emma isn't capable of knowing the true extent of how badly this was going to unfold. Their magic is still refusing to completely merge due to whatever restraints Emma has in her heart.

They should be able to stop the self-destruct. Their magic together was what built worlds, tore armies apart and broke every single law of reality and rule of curses. She had known the moment their twined together magic got them through the magical barriers Regina had cast onto the Mausoleum. There was no means for anyone to enter those stone walls without destroying the barriers she had erected. Not without her express permission and magical involvement. No matter how skilled she was and how Emma took to her own magic, she had been in no condition to allow them through. The barriers were not penetrated, broken or demolished; it had just allowed them through because they had an essence more potent than anything else in the world.

But Emma was a fickle believer and it seems there were only moments when she was able to trust. Surely the furthest thing from Emma's mind at this particular second was their complicated relationship. There's not enough time to explain so Regina allows only one hand to center the switch as she uses the other to weave a teleportation spell into being. She would've given her heart for her mother and lived a life in bleak and clear logic.

She would give even more for Emma.

.

.

.

.

.

So she does.

* * *

Inspired and written with 'Matt Walters - I Would Die For You' playing in the background

A/N: I've been cautioned by my wondrous beta Luthorweeds that I _should_ probably leave a warning on this ficlet but if I did that then the last line would loose it's impact. I do apologize if it greatly upsets someone but I stand by my choice to leave this without any forewarning. Because sometimes that's just life, it's hits you without any blazoning signs and it leaves you staggering, confused and barely alive.


End file.
